BBC on one box, but not another ? Also poor ITV ?

[joidevie]

Hi all..

I've just finally re-wired my 80cm dish with new top of the range coax (the slightly thicker sort bought from the UK, and now I have no joins and a cable run of around 20m). I was having poor reception before with pixelating etc.. Dish is un-obscured and I'm in Dept 11 near Carcassonne. The  OPTEX 9540 now receives BBC1 London much better with no pixelating etc having 'auto tuned' to ASTRA. ITV however is still not great. No CNN or SKY News is traced on the scan.

I have plugged a METRONIC Touchbox 3 to the same coax and 'auto scanned' ASTRA 2A and this has tuned many channels including CNN and SKY NEWS, a couple of regional ITV's (not London) but no BBC other than BBC News 24.

The METRONIC box seems to have a stronger reception and better interface and is probably the box I want to continue with..

Question - before I go skewing LNB's, moving dishes etc...  What's going one here ? I have a satellite 'meter', but what should I be looking for if I plug it into the dish and start turning the dish about to 'find' the best signal ? I have in the past used the 'signal quality' levels on a portable TV to 'tune'..

I sense there is an issue with different positions coming from the ASTRA 2A Sat ?

Many thanks for any guidance as I am getting a little tired of carrying tv sets up a ladder trying to tune my dish !

[Anton Redman]

If you have a look at the Lyngsat site you will find that BBC News 24 and BBC Parliment are the odd channels out and are on a different transponder to the remainder of BBC TV output. It is possible that the you Metronic box does not have the BBC1 etc paramenters in its memory. Try asking for a search on

Frequency (GHz) 10.773 - Polarisation H - Symbol Rate (Mbaud) 22.0 - FEQ 5/6

Parameters are as used on a Sky Digibox you may need more traling zeros for your box.

Similar may be neccesary to find C4 in unencrypted form

Freq 10729 Vertical 22000 5/6 - Channel ID shows as 8350

I do not have the details for Sky news to hand but they will be on the Lyngsat site

I would try that before experimenting with dish position and skew. 

[joidevie]

Thanks Anton.. I tried making a more specific search on the METRONIC Touchbox 3 as you suggested, but there didn't seem to be any sign of BBC1 or any other ITV channels other than a couple of very regional ITV's . Also no un-encripted C4. All the radio channels seem to be loading fine.

Is this now a dish positioning issue ?

Many thanks..

[Anton Redman]

I am not familiar with the Metronic menu system but if you have the regional ITV but not Sky News my first check would be to find Sky news parameters and add them to the boxes memory. If the dish will not find Sky news with the right parameters then the alignment or skew is probably slightly off.

I would also wait to see if anybody adds any other advice before moving the dish.

[Martin963]

You've been having quite a saga with this one joiedevie.   I seem to remember that some time back - whilst I recommended that you get rid of the joins on your system - I also said you probably should also have a good check to ensure that your dish was actually doing the business properly.

The missing channels on one box:   could be two things.   Some boxes are somewhat awkward about accepting the presence of "new" transponders;   there are some where you have to "save" the new parameters first before you can do a scan,   whereas the more user-friendly ones save-and-scan in one step (so you don't notice the save bit) and everafter remember the new figures for subsequent scans.    Even Metronics differ in what software they use so it's difficult to be sure.    The other major possibility is that receivers have wildly differing sensitivities so if your dish is not as well aligned as it might be one box will work fine and another will just hang.

Unless your sat meter is very sophisticated my view is that it's going to be a waste of time,   your technique of watching the signal quality on-screen is much to be preferred.   However,   I know others are wedded to sat meters (even cheap ones) so maybe I've just not seen a good example.   However,  it is important to tweak the dish on one of the transponders that a) is weak and b) is one you particularly want,   in your case Astra 2D and ITV being a priority.    I find that on a lot of boxes the sig meters stay "up" on the screen (without constantly having to be recalled) if you use a radio channel,   and to this end R5 Live is a good one because it's on Astra 2D (unlike most of the others).

Obviously I don't want to get the blame when you have struggled up on a ladder and not effected any improvement,  but I do think that your dish is probably very slightly off beam,   OR the skew - as Anton says - needs tweaking;     I'd start with that because it's easier.   You may of course have to adjust both;   I'm surprised how far round (clockwise as viewed looking "into" the dish) the LNB needs to go on some 2D transponders,   nearly round to seven-a-clock in some cases,   although with you being further east than a lot of other French folks seven a clock may be too far!   Give it a go anyway as a starter if you can,  twisting and watching the 5Live signal as you do.  

If you *can* borrow yet another box that you *know* has all the channels  memorised then that would also allow you to eliminate some of the questions.....   and indeed find out perhaps whether fellow Astra 2D watchers are getting away with the same size dish as you in your area....